


The Ghem's Baby

by Zoya1416



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Enemies, F/M, families, infant, war bride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 21:31:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya1416/pseuds/Zoya1416
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the First Cetagandan War, a Ghem struggles to save his family.<br/>Set just before the Cetagandans destroy Vorkosigan Vashnoi</p><p>This fic is the background for "At the End of Days."</p><p>http://archiveofourown.org/works/1748684/chapters/3736124</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ghem's Baby

**Author's Note:**

> The Vorkosiverse all belongs to Lois McMaster Bujold. I am only borrowing it. Jal and Katya belong to me, though.

He had captured an old truck by the simple means of pulling out the man driving it, and driven it back to the base. There were other men doing the same thing that morning, because for once chaos instead of serenity marked the Cetagandan forces. The lightfliers had come in by night, so many of them, and he and his housemates had guessed that something had changed. No one would tell them anything. Then there were the rumbling of trucks and tanks up the highways Cetaganda had built for the purpose of propagating this lingering war. Their staff-leader had finally run in, worrisome in itself, and shouted at them to go directly to their work-stations and pack everything, and then get it on trucks for the spaceport. Rumors were flying fast, but everyone could tell that flight was imminent.

That had been at three o'clock. This was five AM. They had packed up the machine lab as best they could, and were now unbolting the heaviest machines from the floor. Those they could not unbolt, they were melting down the tightcrete next to, and then freeing the driven metal pilings by short-charges. His teammate leaned over.

“It's okay, Jal. I know you need to get to her.”

Jal nodded and left, carrying anything in hand he could from the machine lab, which was only some scissors, a small wrench set, and universal pliers. Two marking knives. A pair of thick leather gloves. He grabbed a hand-truck and raced to the back dock of the commissary, where they were also throwing food containers onto pallets as fast as they could. 

Perishables were being left behind. He had a friend here, too, Benak, who knew what he needed and gave all he could on the sly.

“Rat bars, they keep sending them, and you know we never have enough prisoners to feed them to, here, take a whole gross. Okay, here's two more we'll never need. And these are newer, still pretty awful, prot-packs. One will feed a person for a whole day; you dissolve them in water, or whatever you've got to drink. I, uh, 'lost' the whole box for you. And here, this bread will mold, and these citrines are half gone-off, and—this, uh, you can have all the cabbage, it will be so good to stop eating cabbage, but, uh,--and his friend motioned him further back and pulled treasure out of a filthy sack—“here are the vitamins you were asking me about. I've got four bottles, that's a year.”

“Give me everything you've got. And knives, any knives you can spare.”

His friend glared at him, but decided that the Vorkosigan Vashnoi peasantry wasn't going to cut all their throats by morning, and grabbed him two knives from the butcher department, along with the meatiest soupbones. He'd never eaten home-made stew until he came to Barrayar, but here the command post had tried it, pronounced it good, and cheap to make, and the canteen had it at all hours. The stew for the Cetagandan officers had real meat in it, though. His friend nodded him goodbye, and tucked his largest credit—chit in his pocket. Then Benak called him back.

“Jal—they're going to nuke it. As soon as we all get far enough away. That's why we're going so fast.”

He started to shake his head at the horror, but Benak stopped him. “It's true, and you never heard anything from me. And here's a ten gallon can of petrol for that truck I didn't see you come up in.”

He was ashamed of the next thought in his mind, "I can't go over there—against a nuke attack!” But he didn't hesitate. Back at his house, he reached deep into the closet, and didn't have to move aside the panel they'd installed—it was already standing wide open. He nearly panicked. But his house-mates hadn't stolen from him, they'd only grabbed what each had hidden—black-market items they'd bought, or hoped to sell, pretty handkerchiefs for girls. He had more in his, against the day he knew must come. Of course every soldier had been hoping it would come, for the past twenty years of this soul-shriveling war, but now finally, things were at an end. He hoped. Everyone had heard rumors that the Vorkosigan capitol would not survive the war. The whole damn, “they're just peasants, it'll be over by next First Day” attitude which had embroiled them in this horrible, well, quagmire had been stopped being used by the third year, and then it was just “Fletchir's damn war,” if no one could hear you. 

The milus in your shoe, the jabber under your nail, or even something worse, the hope of the whole planet, something no one had been able to crush, or capture, or quell, was the ten-times cursed Vorkosigan District. The mountains went on, and on, and had hills, crevasses, and arroyos, and canyons, and ravines, and whatever damn name there was for what ever up and down dirt has. They'd quit trying to invade the caves, after losing the third legion, and instead just bombed them. It was clear that the cave-dwellers hadn't used all their time fighting, they'd dug whole new tunnels and exits. The bombing was having no effect, so they quit, and every little peak had a machine-gun nest by dawn. 

Now he had pushed the old man out of his truck and drove to his wife's house. The commanders still thought of her as his whore. She was his, the only woman he'd ever had who'd stayed with him more than a month. Well, she would have stayed with any other Cetagandan in town who cared, but he got her because she wasn't nearly as beautiful as the ones the higher level ghems had. He'd gotten to her first, and he'd put a ring on her finger, like you were supposed to do here. They both knew it wouldn't last forever, but it was for real—he was at the apartment.

“Katya! Katya!” She came running from the back of the little apartment. He looked at her, but she nodded. 

“I know you're leaving. It's okay.”

“It's not okay! You have to get out of here, now! You have to leave the city immediately!”

She turned toward the bedroom. “We can't leave. Gr'mere is too ill.”

“You must leave. They are going to destroy the city!”  
“We'll, we'll pack and leave by morning, but--”

“No! I don't know how long we've got, but they're going to nuke the city as soon as possible. I can't stay but a second.”  
She stared at him, not in horror, but in incomprehension.

“It's a city-killer bomb. It will kill the whole city, and leave nothing behind. The city will be glass, and for miles around the air and soil will be poisoned. You have to leave now. I got you a truck.”

She looked outside, stunned. “They...they wouldn't...they couldn't—why?”  
“Doesn't matter, but they will.”

He showed her all he'd been hiding in his closet, and all he'd grabbed from the commissary. He was telling her now,  
“these are protein food bars, they taste terrible, but it will keep a person alive for a day--”

She laughed at him. No one in the city had cared what anything tasted like for years. Only the invaders cared about taste.

“And these are better, you can mix them with water, make sure it's clean water, and you can give it to the baby.”  
“Or can you powder it up and give little pieces to her? Just put it in her mouth?”

“I guess. But she'll have to have water, too.”

The whole reason he was here this morning came toddling around her mother's legs, hearing his voice.

“Lisbet!” He had named her after the Empress, because to him she was as beautiful as a queen. She was fifteen months old. He picked her up and swung her up high, and then down between his ankles, once, and sat her on the floor, where she cried.

Katya called to her sisters, had a quick conference with them, and they started running, carrying things from the apartment to the truck.

He continued. “Knives, I know you can use them. This is a set of silverware, it's real silver, you can trade it. Here are healers, gauzies, they will heal a wound if you just put it on tight, these are splint packs, clean-up packs,” he reached further down. 

When Katya had told him she was pregnant, he asked the stupid question men across the galaxy always ask when they're surprised: “Are you sure?” and then proceeded to ask the second stupidest question.

Katya had hit him, not slapped him, but hit him in his arm, hard. She was a big girl; it hurt. As he rocked back, she spat at him that being his woman meant something to her, even when her neighbors swore at her and called her a collaborator.

“I would be idiotic to go with another man—everyone knows that once they get a Cetagandan, they're in luck!”

And then he'd said one of the smartest things a man can say. She had cried on his shoulder, and they'd had a wedding that day with two tiny circles, with colored sand instead of groats, because who could afford to waste groats. 

The only people left in Vorkosigan Vashnoi at this point were those who could be useful, almost all for serf's work as cleaners, movers, cooks, stoop labor, entertainers....and whores, all for the invaders. Her sisters both worked as...singers...and card-dealers in the casino. She had told him that her grandmother had left for the hills years before. 

“But she can't fight! And—you said that your father and grandfather were dead.”

She had shaken her head at his lack of understanding.  
“She can cook. She can wash wounds and put on bandages, and clean. She'll get as much food there, maybe even more if they can grow things.”

Katya's older brothers had been in the army for years, a decade for her oldest brother, he understood.

And then the cute little brother, the one he'd gotten toys for, the prize a real game-ball for the curious sport they had on Barrayar—he'd left for the war.

He was shocked. “He's only seven!”

“And has been wanting to go for months! He can run messages, be a lookout, load weapons, harvest in the fields. And he's helping my grandmother, too, because she needs help now. He gets her food while she's still in bed, so she can sleep longer, and cleans her clothes.”

Her sisters had gotten to the next of the last boxes he had crammed in the truck, and screamed. Katya ran to look.

“I—I--they were in the market, and I thought, thought, that you could cut them up again, and--”

They were Barrayaran uniforms, each one stained with brownish-red.

Katya hit herself instead of hitting him, this time, he could tell.

“Bastard! Graverobber! Where did you get them?”

“In the market. Look, most of the cloth is still good, and I know it's cold here, and you could cut these—”

She did hit him then, pounded and screamed at him, “They didn't cremate our dead, did they? We at least cremated yours! You are monsters!”

She sat on the stoop, crying, and he said, “I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. I saw these in the market, and people were buying and talking about cutting down—"he shut up.

“I've got—look, you don't want these either?”

They were Barrayan military boots, heavy, several sizes, and real wool socks.

She dried her tears, still sobbing dryly. “Y-Yes, we'll take them. Leave the uniforms, but we'll take the boots. I still hate you for looting the dead, but we can wear the boots.”

He'd saved the last box to show her himself.  
“Look, Katya, I—just want you to know that if I could have brought you home with me, and Lisbet, too, I would have.”  
“Thank you. But we would never have left Barrayar. I'm glad we were married, though. It makes a big difference to a child here not to be a bastard.”

He opened his final treasures, and then she cried again. He had bought two poncho-shawls in the market, of thick wool, with the country patterns he'd come to love. He'd bought four inner shawls of finer wool. These were out of reach of the locals, but were being snapped up by Cetagandan ghem as cheap souvenirs. He had babushka scarves, a dozen, the cheapest sort, but bright and cheery. And on top of these were the Cetagandan warm-sheets, thin layers of a synthetic cloth which would not tarnish, or tear, or burn, and was heated from the inside every time you flipped it open. Kinetic energy transfer, or something like that. And three brand-new warm outfits for Lisbet, which he'd had a seamstress from the market sew for him, only this past weekend. He was so glad he had realized she'd gotten bigger. These would have been presents for their second anniversary, next week, never to be celebrated now.

It had taken fifteen minutes. And now the women were gently carrying out the last thing, the reason they hadn't left the city before. Katya's great-grandmother was eighty, an enormous age for a Barrayaran anywhere, and she had survived twenty years of occupation by the Cetagandans. Husband, son, grandson, and now great-grandson, had gone into the maw of the war. She was too tired and weak, and in the city there were some nominal medical services, one clinic, anyway, if a relative could wait all day with her. More importantly, she hadn't been able to do a full day's work in the caves, and had come home so that she wouldn't be another mouth for the war effort to feed. Now she was going back, her most prized possession in her lap, a decorative wooden box packed full of the pictures of her family. 

Even he was in the box, because photographers still existed in the city, usually producing pornography for the invaders. This one had been thrilled to be recording a wedding. Jal had never seen plain, flat photographs until he came to Barrayar, and had never seen black and white photographs anywhere. But here he was, in his wedding clothes, a Cetagandan uniform, full face paint. A Cetagandan couldn't anymore do without full paint on this occasion, than a Barrayaran couldn't do without wedding circles. And Katya in a white dress which several brides had already worn, judging from needle marks where sizes had been taken in and let out. Her sisters had quickly put on a tiny bit of new lace for the wedding veil.

This was a much stranger, older, shabbier, place than he'd ever known, and now he was crying, sitting down on the stoop, holding Lisbet, holding Katya, leaving them, hating it.  
If he ran away now...he couldn't. The Barrayarans would kill him. He had a whole constellation, all back—someplace else which used to be home. 

Now a Cetagandan-style light army car pulled up, and his heart froze. His hand went down to his weapons, and he pushed Katya and the baby back behind him. He would die here, right now, before seeing harm come to them. But it was his frantic housemates.

“Get in! They've finished with the materiel loading, and the foods, and they've called a one-hour load time!”

He reached up to Katya's great-grandmother. “Please, give me one of our wedding pictures.” 

She would have argued, but Katya sorted in the box quickly and gave him one.

He handed the keys to the truck to Katya, and said again,  
“Get as far out of town, in a straight line, as fast as you possibly can. Here's extra fuel, but go as fast and far as you can. Get to Vorkosigan Surleau, or farther, the caves.”

He kissed her for the last time, threw his great-coat over her, and drove away with his brother soldiers. The spaceships were beginning to load. All over Vorkosigan Vashnoi the men who'd been doing the same desperate errands he had drove in recklessly to the spaceships, carrying the duffles their friends had understandingly packed for them. 

Then it was waiting for hours. It turned out the stores hadn't all gone, after all, because priority had been for the materiel. Tanks and cars didn't load as fast, and had to be more carefully positioned and chocked, than people. The city had held two thousand men, and the countryside fifty thousand. The warriors from the countryside had been pouring in, and NOW they were finally mustered quickly. 

They lifted off four hours after he'd left Katya. Almost to the last second he kept hoping there would be a reprieve, that the High Ghem would see that turning an occupied city into glass, a city of non-combatants, a capitol city, might be vengeance, but it wasn't smart. Every enemy Eta Ceta had in the future would fight harder to avoid that fate.

He had been counting minutes and kilometers. She had to go six kilometers to get out of the city, but she'd be able to drive pretty fast in the truck. Then there was smooth highway for kilometers, because the Cetagandan war effort couldn't have done without it. They'd paved back nearly to the mountains. She could go 80 km an hour on a flat plane, even in the old truck, but there was virtually no flatland. Surely she must be deep within the Dendarii mountains, unless somebody had stolen the truck, or she'd had a wreck in the damned switchbacks. He'd given her all his money. She might be able to use it for bribes, if nothing else. At the last minute he'd given her a military grade stunner. He'd be docked, but not disciplined, due to that last bit of chaos.

There were no windows on a ship. They hadn't been told when it happened. But they all knew. There was a grinding, not a noise, but a faint grumble in the walls, when nukes were loaded into firing position. A lot different from when only lasers and explosives engaged. And then a different sort of grumble that he'd hoped never to hear, as radiation rained down on the enemy—on his family.

It was eleven years before he ever heard from them again. Relationships with Barrayar would never be normal, but at last they had a two man consulate. He had taken every avenue he could to get into diplomatic relations as soon as his war years were over. He had married again. Married for the first time officially. He had three children with his ghem-lady, and had progressed up the rank of the ghem in a normal pattern. Actually he had studied it very carefully, and had not progressed nearly fast enough in either military or diplomatic rank to be dealt that most precious peril, a haut-wife. He had lost one wife. He couldn't bear to think of all the loss his ghem-wife would experience if he were given a haut-lady.

He called her the first day he was on Barrayar and could get a private circuit, out in the city of Vorbarr Sultana. Voice only, they still didn't have video in the mountains. A little voice answered.  
" 'Allo?"  
"Lisbet?” 

“Elsi? Nah, she's not here today, she's gone to spend the night away. I'm Arky. Who are you?”  
He could have cried with relief. Half-Cetagandan children were often killed. But they had been married, and the child was legitimate, which appeared to make a difference here.  
Then the phone had been grabbed away before he could say the third stupidest thing a man could say, to a child who didn't know the difference, “I'm Lisbet's father.”

“Katya?”  
“Jal?” Then they both cried.

***fin***


End file.
